Howard Gardner. Photo Credit Harvard Graduate School of Education

U.N. Panel Says World Should Ditch Dollar A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar. Reuters.

Eruption in South Pacific March 19, 2009
NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – Scientists sailed Thursday to inspect an undersea volcano that has been erupting for days near Tonga (MSN, with video ) and also from Boston.com

First Tongue: An Ancient Global Language

Can we build a world with open source? (Victor Keegan. The Guardian)

Life Size Blue Whale. WDCS (requires flash)

Alternative Energy Revolution clever comic from XKCD

Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves By EVO MORALES AYMA (New York Times – may need registration)

Poetry is the cornerstone of civilisation
Thoughts of scrapping the post of poet laureate must be quelled as we should revere the likes of Seamus Heaney and Wendy Cope. AA Gill. The Times

Dwyer and Son, Dublin Spring Show. photo credit JDP, Castlebar.News

This is what the National Library of Australia has to say about

W. Dwyer (Coach Builder).
Description
Joseph Bishop arrived in Melbourne during the goldrushes, ultimately establishing a coach building business at Beechworth, which was later transferred to Euroa. The family moved to Melbourne in the late 1880s, where one son became the proprietor of the trade journal ‘The Australasian Coachbuilder and Saddler’. The collection consists of family photographs and photographs used to illustrate ‘The Australasian Coachbuilder and Saddler’. Photograph shows a view of a 2 wheeled single horse sulky. Clearly displayed on a sign in the photo are the following details: “W. Dwyer, 144 King St Newtown. Tel 294 Newtown. Coach Builder Sydney Wollongong. First prizes Sydney 1898, 1900,01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13. First Special & Champion Prizes. Taken all over New South Wales”. This photograph was most likely originally used as an illustration for ‘The Australasian Coachbuilder and Saddler’.
-
Description: National Library of Australia Picture Australia

My question is, were they brothers? Or did they have a common ancestor in the 1798 hero Michael Dwyer, who was transported to Australia and is buried with his wife Mary Byrne in Sydney.

…that Poetry Ireland, (since it will take such a central organisation), organise a Poets Corner in Dublin (maybe the first of many throughout the country) where everyone/anyone can stop for 15 minutes to listen and buy poetry. I would suggest that a meeting of interested parties be set up to discuss the initiative and organise as big a kick-start as can be mustered.

It’s an idea that deserves an airing, at least.

Even if you’re not interested in such matters, do have a look at Michael’s blog Poetry and Miscellaneous Yap, and check out the Bosch animation video.

I’m a big Bosch fan, and his Garden of Earthly Delights featured in my most recent novel, The Fisher Child. Anyway, Michael recommends this and other Bosch videos on the web, as well as the music featured in this one, by Jean-Philippe Goude

I would have continued to be unaware of it but for Christine Clear and Rosemarie Rowley. Rosemarie sent me an email wondering if my website had moved. In Christine’s case, her friends and family who use IE complained that they couldn’t access her website. As her website is crucial to her work, I offered to help track down the reason, as it was fine in Firefox, and so I opened the dreaded Vista and gave it a go.

These things can be like a needle in a haystack, but finally I removed The Pale Blue Dot, that wonderful video excerpt from Carl Sagan’s TV series from, I think, the seventies, which was embedded in her site as a YouTube video. Suddenly IE was happy, Christine was happy and I was happy.

But then this morning I remembered that I too had that video embedded, along with several others in this and my alternative party website.

So I log out of my Ubuntu (Linux) comfort zone, and fire up the dreaded Vista and Internet Explorer (7) once again.

Yup. It viewed both sites and then threw up the page Aborted notice and the page went to, ironically, an IE notice full of javascript. Thanks a bunch, Microsoft. You spend billions developing software and yet you can’t cater for the world’s most popular video site. I normally try to avoid MS bashing, but once again your crappy software has taken up far too much of my time. So now I have to trawl the web to find a solution.
Thankfully I found it at Eastwood Zhao dot COM, for which many thanks.

The solution is simpler, of course, but it’s not the YouTube standard, so we have to do it the MS way once again.

May I implore those of you who use IE to switch to Firefox(or Safari – anything!).
For the more adventurous among you, consider Ubuntu. It solves all these problems at once, as Firefox is its standard browser. You can see my Ubuntu site under Sister Sites in the column to your right.

Thanks once again to
Christine Clear and Rosemarie Rowley, and to
Eastwood Zhao dot COM for the solution.

Also, hat-tip to Daragh and Graeme at Letshost for maintaining an interest in this problem.

“From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings!”

– George Orwell, 1984

We are about to enter into a state where every digital step you take is recorded. At the end of March, the Government will introduce the most draconian law in the history of personal privacy in Ireland: 24-hour internet monitoring. A log will be made of everyone’s internet activity and every email sent and received.

Greetings from the State of Surveillance.

see full article by Marie Boran Silicon Republic 28.02.2008

Scientists have now established that radioactivity was blown east over Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and north over Scandinavia.

Why are we not surprised?

Let the Facts Speak (part of a larger peace website), which lists nuclear incidents since 1947, has this to say about the fire at Windscale (now Sellafied). It has several typos, but is otherwise well sourced.

17. 1957, October – WINDSCALE No 1, U.K.

Fire caused by human error and defective procedures resulted in eleven tons of uranium being ablaze, releasing a vast cloud of radio-isotopes from the melted fuel. Milk from an area of more than 500 square kilometers (approx. 2 million litres) was poured into the rivers and sea as unsafe for human consumption. Farmers were compensated by the Government, but how many people living near Windscale were affected is not known. Nor is it known how much radioactivity descended over Westmoreland and Cumberland. Local inhabitants say there is a high incidence of cancer deaths in the area, but the Government did not carry out any medical or statistical checks. Both Windscale reactors have since been filled with concrete and entombed. The radioactive cloud reached up to Denmark. In London, 500 km from Windscale the radioactivity reached 20 times the normal level. Report of enquiries into safety was never published. (Sources s A. Gyorgy p.1198/S. Novick). However a previously classified report released in 1989, revealed that the MacMillan Government invested large amounts of money to finance a concerted pro-nuclear campaign which included scientists traversing U.K., assuring people that the accident was insignificant. (W. Australian May 1989).

Official documents were also released under the 30 year rule in 1987.

Let The Facts Speak quotes from these also.

Windscale (later named Sellafield) was producing Plutonium for military use. The fire broke out at one of its atomic piles -primitive reactors in which containers of uranium were irradiated to produce the Plutonium. It raged for 16 hours. The Windscale cloud contaminated large areas of Britain and Ireland, and contained more than 600 times as much radioactive iodine as was released during the Three Mile Island accident. Authorities at the time decided not to evacuate local people even though they were exposed to radiation levels 10 times the allowed LIFETIME dose – within a matter of hours. The only one safeguard taken to health was the destruction of two million litres of contaminated milk from farms around Windscale. However, it has now been revealed that milk with contamination up to three times the official danger limit was released for human consumption. (“Swedish News Service”, “Financial Times” 2 Jan. 1988, “Observer” (U.K.) 3 Jan 1988, “Daily Telegraph” (U.K.) 2 Jan 1988, “Guardian” (U.K.) 4 Jan 1988, WISE 285.

Just so you know.

Requires Flash.

Juan Enriquez at TED

I like the Luas, but it isn’t practical for city-wide adoption, and is ten times too expensive. The Steetcar could be the answer to our woeful public transport problems in Dublin.

Have a look at Streetcars of Desire on alternative party.

Of course because the site promotes the benefits of marijuana, many will be sceptical. But I’ve been sceptical about the arguments of the anti-marijuana lobby for a long time. To paraphrase Shakespeare, methinks they protest too much. When it comes to people suffering and dying I think we’ve an obligation to have an open mind.

For the record, I don’t do cigarettes, marijuana or any other kind of drug bar alcohol – the latter in pathetic moderation these days – and the occasional painkiller. My only real drug is the internet. But when I see people suffering and dying, and what they have to endure as conventional treatment, I have to ask myself what harm a regular puff would do them?

And I haven’t been given a satisfactory answer.

I remember the sheer relief of morphine when I was in hospital. It’s a high, there’s no doubt. although the last time I had it they give it in controlled feeds, not the once off blast from an injection (pity, that). I know from experience it’s highly addictive. Yet a natural substance which is not addictive, or at least not within a million miles as addictive as morphine, is looked on with horror. Why?

Just as architects who design hospitals should be confined to bed in one for a minimum of six weeks, preferably in full-body plaster, politicians who jump to ban beneficial substances should be put through a pain programme for a similar period, and given relief only when they promise to have an open mind. That would change the world for the better really, really fast.

Who knows, we might even find a cure for cancer.

Anyway, judge for yourself.

US: Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew In ’74 [via Digg]

Author Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry – humans mimicking nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 23:59)

Many of the talks on TED are rivetting, but this one is in a class of its own. Janine Benyus
is President of the Biomimicry Institute. She’s the author of six books, including Biomimicry: Inspired by Nature

I could rave all day about the remarkable service from my host letshost.ie.

Always patient, interested and understanding beyond the call of duty, the guys get the problem solved with utmost courtesy.

Plus of course the sheer value of their single package. No irritating ‘home’ packages without MySql or php, just great value and space to do what takes your fancy.
So no, I don’t rave about them all day – instead I just recommend my friends to get them as host.

And no, they’re not paying me or even asking or hinting at me to write this. They’re far too interested in getting on with the job and letting their work speak for itself.

Of the “pale blue dot” reproduced at Futility Closet (link below), he said

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Earth seen from 4 billion miles away, photographed by Voyager 1 on June 6, 1990

To all friends and family who might have expected to hear from me over the weekend, I’ve been caught in the grip of tech-hypnosis. I’m wrecked.

Before embarking on installing Ubuntu Linux, something I’ve threatened to do for a long time, I had to back up the thousands of files on my computer. That in itself is no bad thing, and long overdue, but it took a long time, as I was backing up to cd roms. (Yes, I know, but I hate those terrabyte backup gizmos).

My main concern was my emails, addresses, and many passwords, and all the settings for same and for FileZilla, the ftp program. I look after several websites for friends as well as myself, so there was a certain responsibility to others involved.

Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10) installed like a dream and I thought I was in clover. I was a little nervous about the partioning, in case it would wreck my XP, but it seems all is well and very efficient.

But then the trouble started. Despite all my reading over the last several months, the reality is that I still haven’t found a way of transferring my emails and settings – or rather I found several ways on the web, but the practicalities of implementing these methods defeated me at every turn.

Then I gave up and decided to relax and watch a dvd I had started the other night, an old favourite, La Dolce Vita..

But no.

“Totem could not play ‘dvd://media/cdrom0
No uri handler implemented for “dvd”

Oh.

What the hell does that mean? Well, I found out in Google of course. The bold Totem is missing the necessary codecs to play a dvd, even though it’s listed as a dvd player.

Another search on the Ubuntu forums produced a couple of solutions, but they all involved something called ‘sudo’
eg

sudo apt-get install vlc

But how do you ‘sudo’? I know something about how the package manager works (it’s different in the previous version of Ubuntu by the way) because there’s a rare, graphic tutorial here.

So once again I gave up. (Note to self: Not like me to give up).

I found an interesting Book Collection Manager, called Alexandria, which apparently can import from Amazon etc. So I tried that. If I entered ‘Casey’ it would happily import dozens of book details by Caseys I’ve never heard of, but if I entered ‘Philip Casey’ it crashed. Twice. I know when I’m not wanted and I had the useful excercise of deleting it, Ubuntu fashion.

In the end, I managed to import my passwords into Firefox, thanks to an excellent extension inadequately called Password Exporter, so I could access WordPress from the Linux version of Firefox.

One last thing: can anyone tell me why the menus in Linux Firefox are different to Windows Firefox? I have version 2, but the menus seem to be from version 1.xx.

Anyway, I’m off to watch La Dolce Vita on XP. It looks like Ubuntu will be
a hobby till I get the hang of it. I intend to get the hang of it, and if my peripherals all work with it I hope to eventually dump XP. I like the concept too much to abandon it, but don’t let anyone tell me Ubuntu’s for the masses.

Ubuntu

Harmless fun, and while it’s slow, it’s not bad as a search engine, and makes the best job I’ve seen of distinguishing itself from Google. No doubt that was the objective and no doubt it can only improve.

Ms Dewey [via Gizmodo]

UPDATE The Guardian has the inside info on Ms Dewey